It started Tuesday, in 90 polling places scattered across Arizona and on the desktops of thousands of registered Democrat voters, and will keep clicking away until Saturday. The reverberations of that Big Bang, though, will be felt for years to come.
The Bang I speak of is the Arizona State Democratic Presidential Preference Primary election, which began on Super Tuesday and will run until Saturday. That primary made history by being the first to allow US citizens to e-vote in a legally-binding election, but that's not the Big Bang.
The Big Bang is in the numbers. As of midday Thursday, 18,000 registered Arizona Democrat voters had voted via the Internet -- an incredible 40.6 percent increase in voter turnout compared to 12,800 votes cast in the 1996 primary.
If you're wired, the 40.6 percent increase is easy to understand -- the vote's host, Election.com, made e-voting as simple as buying a book on Amazon.com. One of the voters, who goes by the online handle, Airy Zona, explained in his ZDNet TalkBack that the vote was simple and secure. "In addition to the required PIN number you also had to furnish the last four digits of your social security number. I would not have voted in this election had I not been able to do so online," Zona said.
What makes that 40.6 percent increase (an increase that could be more than 50 percent by the time the polls close) incredible isn't just the fact that it defies a long-term decline in voter turnout. It's that it shows a way to gate-crash the US democratic process that could be far more revolutionary than campaign finance reform.
The trouble with democracy
Imagine what would happen if, during the 2000 election, there was a 40 percent increase in voter turnout and 69 percent, as opposed to 1996's 49 percent, of registered voters turned out to choose their preferred president and congressional representatives. Overnight, politicians would have to address the concerns of those extra voters or risk losing their jobs.
Armed with that knowledge, political candidates are far more likely to calibrate their campaigns to suit the concerns of white Baby Boomers, than, say, twenty- or thirtysomething techies. End result: The ever-increasing likelihood that the White House and Congress won't do the bidding of the non-voters.
Another wrinkle is the fact that voting in the United States is voluntary.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against voluntary voting in theory, but I am concerned by one of its side-effects: Low voter turnout. Between 1960 and 1996, voter turnout during presidential election years tumbled from 63 percent to 49 percent. Voter turnout during non-presidential years is even more marginal -- down from 47 percent in 1962 to 38 percent in 1994. End result: In 1994, roughly one-in-three U.S. citizens voted on Newt Gingrich's much-ballyhooed Contract With America.
The real danger with low voter turnout is what it can do to campaigns and legislatures. As things currently stand, candidates -- particularly at the congressional level -- can campaign solely on such hot button issues as abortion or gun control because they know those are the issues most likely to motivate registered voters to actually vote. Besides polarizing elections, this kind of campaigning runs the risk of not only attracting the zealots but also discouraging the more politically disaffected. End result: State and federal legislatures (and, potentially, White Houses) that are skewed by hot-button candidates turned hot-button representatives.
Of course there are security and access issues that need to be fully addressed before e-voting is used in federal elections, and the US military still needs to run its e-voting pilot on election day 2000, But make no mistake the Big Bang has sounded. In the future, elections will be decided with the click of a mouse.
ZDNet News Senior News Producer Joel Deane was a press secretary for the Australian Labor Party.
in my openion democracy is not in danger with low or high turne out of the voters and it is the democracy that has given them the right of staying at home or go for voting.and the people who are not participating in the voting are indirctly involved by some other means.